so come over just be patient
by irnan
Summary: "And that is that," said the Healer cheerfully, "you're free to go, Mr and Mrs Granger. St Mungo's hopes not to see you again."


_this is a disclaimer._

**so come over just be patient**

It was a nice day, a fact for which Hermione Granger was devoutly grateful. Stupid to feel that it would make any kind of difference, really. Well, maybe not; after all the only two rooms in the house which were entirely leak-free were their bedroom and the kitchen, because one was on top of the other, so technically probably only their bedroom counted...

She was sounding like a babbling idiot even to herself. Breath. Deep breath.

Beside her, her mum's mouth was an awkwardly thin line. Dad didn't look too happy either.

"You'll like it," she said. Again. "You really will, it's a great house, and I mean... look at the village, it's lovely here."

Godric's Hollow was basking contentedly in late August sunshine, but her parents weren't interested.

"Hermione," said Dad. "I'm sure you – I just – this isn't exactly –"

That was Dad for you – no good with words but wielded a dentist's drill like nobody's business.

"Your father," said Mum dryly, "doesn't understand how you can have been through everything you've told us about and yet prefer to spend your days in the back of beyond instead of coming home with us."

"Exactly," said Dad. "Hermione, when you get right down to it, we've spent almost no time with you since you were eleven."

Hermione bit her bottom lip. "I... I know."

"And yet you're _still not coming home_," Mum repeated remorselessly.

Dad nodded. "You have to admit -"

But Hermione's patience had thoroughly unravelled.

"I don't _have_ to do anything! That's the point - can't you see - oh, Merlin. Look. This isn't a phase. It's not something I'm coming back from. I can't just snap my fingers and come home, Mum!"

"I didn't notice you apologising for wreaking havoc with our memories, either," Mum added as if she hadn't heard.

Hermione had the urge to tear her hair out. "Nor will I," she said flatly. "You're alive, which is more than can be said for some, which is what I've been trying to tell you for a fortnight!"

"A fortnight in hospital, thanks to my own daughter!"

"The Healers," Hermione gritted out from between clenched teeth, "_obviously_ knew what they were doing."

They'd turned left off the High Street, past the corner shop, along Oak Tree Lane. The house was at the very edge of the village, half-hidden now by a riot of greenery that Neville had helped them grow. Hermione could just see the roof ahead, the smoke drifting up from the chimney, the glint of sunshine on the upstairs windows. Bloody hell, _why_ had she ever thought this was a good idea? She loved her Mum and Dad, and she'd been so worried about them, and there had been such potential for everything to go horribly wrong, but there was - there was such a disconnect between them now. They'd always been so interested in her life, in her friends, in who she was becoming at Hogwarts, she'd told them about Harry and Ron, about Dark Lords and Death Eaters, but she was starting to see that Mum and Dad had never understood it, not truly.

Never, perhaps, taken it to be as real as the schoolwork they saw her do over the holidays at the kitchen table, the wand they had bought her, the goblins who changed their gold. Well, Hermione's scars begged to differ on that score, and so did her nightmares, and the simple truth of the matter was that no amount of _going_ _home_ was going to change that.

Not Mum and Dad's kind of home, anyway.

The garden gate.

Hadn't she done this to herself by sending them away? Hadn't this been the price she'd been prepared to pay?

"Here we are," said Hermione, and pushed it open. The weeds were still growing up between the paving stones, the flowerbeds were a mess, the lounge window on the left was covered over with cardboard and spells. The study windows stood open, the rafters still showed through the roof tiles, the house needed painting, they needed to find a way to reinforce and care for the old Tudor beams.

There was a pause.

"I'm sure it... it will be very lovely," said Mum.

Hermione sighed. Dad's hand nudged her arm conspiratorially, which was heartening.

"The front door sticks," she said. "This way."

Gloriously messy garden - she knew for a fact that Harry liked it best that way - unmowed lawn, more open windows. At the back of the house the new kitchen door was lying on the grass, wet paint gleaming in the sunshine, and Harry was kneeling by it with a paintbrush in his hand, pushing his glasses up his nose. Ron was wearing an old Quidditch jumper and holding a black-haired baby casually in the crook of his arm and offering helpful advice.

"You missed a spot, look."

"It's a door," said Harry, faintly sulky. Hermione could see the beginning of a sunburn on the back of his neck. "An outside door. The paint'll peel off anyway."

"You want to tell that to my mother?" said Ron. "There. See?"

He pointed with the toe of one worn-down trainer. Harry sighed and leaned forward, waving the paintbrush menacingly.

"Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea."

"You might have put it on the hinges first and then painted it," said Hermione critically.

"We tried that," said Ron. "The hinges weren't too impressed with the notion."

She laughed. "Mum, Dad," she said. "You remember Harry and Ron."

"Of course," said Dad politely, gracefully neglecting to mention that he remembered Harry and Ron from the time when Ron's Dad had started a brawl with Lucius Malfoy in a magical bookshop. "Must say, you've gotten quite a bit taller."

Harry straightened up, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Well... welcome to Godric's Hollow, Mr and Mrs Granger. Erm, tea?"

"Thank you," said Mum. "That would be lovely."

"Right," said Harry, turning to Ron. "I'll go and - why don't you give me -"

"And how are you gonna put the kettle on one-handed?" Ron said pointedly.

"Oh, give him here," said Hermione. "That's it. Hello, Teddy-love. How'd you like the house now, hmm? Now it's almost got a roof on it? We'll be doing you a room up before long, yes we will..."

"Erm, Teddy's my godson," Harry explained to Mum and Dad. "His parents -" His hands opened briefly, clenched tight, white scars across the back of his right one stretching. "Well. Tea!"

He stepped round the door and went inside, leaving Hermione alone with the baby, her parents, and her...

... well, boyfriend. (Finally.)

"So..." said Ron."No trouble at St Mungo's?"

"None," said Hermione.

"Funny sort of name for a saint," said Dad.

Hermione closed her eyes.

"Wizarding names. It's usually the really traditional pureblood families that have the oldest and weirdest ones," said Ron. "Though I thought he was the patron saint of - Glasgow or Edinburgh. Can't remember."

"Ah."

"Yes."

Awkward silence, broken by the sound of the baby gurgling happily.

"So, um, he - lives here? Teddy?"

"No," said Hermione. "Mum, I told you - Teddy's Gran is his guardian, but his Mum and Dad were our friends, and his Dad was Harry's father's friend -"

"And they died."

"Yes."

"In this fight - battle."

"Yes."

"That you were also in."

Ron glanced at her, but didn't speak.

"_Yes_, Mum."

"Which it did not occur to you that had no business being anywhere near -"

"Mum, we have had this argument six times already today alone, but if you really want to hear it again, then I shall tell you: it was my business, it was always my business, Harry is my friend and –"

_And it was the right thing to do and someone had to stop him someone had to say no and take a stand and fight and it had to be Harry because of magic stuff that you wouldn't understand anyway, and that meant it had to be me because – because there are more important things than books and cleverness! More important things than staying alive, even! _

How to tell that to two people who've never in their quiet, cheerful lives so much as imagined having to make that decision? Wordless in the face of seven years of history which she will never be able to vocalise in a manner her parents might understand, Hermione Granger took a verbal shortcut of a kind which she had never in her life needed to take before: "And I am a Gryffindor _and we do not run_."

Nobody had even moved yet. They were all still standing in the grass around that ridiculous door with the smell of paint rising off it and the noise of the kettle boiling in the kitchen. Hermione thought Harry had probably left the kitchen so he wouldn't have to listen to their argument; she couldn't blame him.

Ron's mouth was twitching. Mum, never privy to the Sorting Hat's idea that _hmm, you have more potential than that I think Miss Granger_, decided to appeal to hitherto unavailable reinforcements. "But you, Ron, you surely -"

"My brother died there," Ron said, smile wiped away suddenly, jerky, quiet. "Same as Tonks and Lupin." His hand came up to touch Teddy's hair. "It wasn't for nothing."

Dad exploded, in that quiet, half-strangled way he had. "Then what the _blazes_ was it for?"

Ron crossed his arms over his chest, Gryffindor-stubborn, hurting, pale again as he had not been since they had left the Burrow and come to Godric's Hollow, away from the grief and the stifling togetherness, the inability to be alone, to not talk, to share a room the three of them together as they had for months, only comfort they had had for so long, only one they needed even now.

(Hermione was tempted to hate her father for bringing that look back to Ron's face.)

"Everything," he said, strained. "Everything we are. It was about - about power, and stopping it, and saying no. I'm a pureblood. I never needed to fight." He paused. "Nobody ever needs to do the right thing, if you can just get yourself a definition of 'need' that's bollocksed up enough to justify it."

"That's not -"

"That's all the answer any of us have got," Hermione said fiercely. "And if that's not good enough for you, Dad -"

"You could have _died_!" Mum shouted. "You could have died, and we would never even have _known_, Hermione!"

Teddy's warm weight in her arms; Ron by her side, Harry's home all around her that he had asked them to rebuild with him, to make whole. "It was a risk," she said, and tried hard not to shake, "it was the risk we all took."

Somewhere in the trees, a bird was singing; a car crunched slowly over a gravel drive beyond the hedge. Mum was paler than Hermione had ever seen her, and she knew then how close they were to destroying their relationship entirely. She'd been wrong, there were words for what she'd done to her family. _You hold your principles higher than your own parents? _

_Yes._

Harry's shadow in the kitchen doorway. "Tea's ready," he said. "Won't you come in, Mr and Mrs Granger?" He smiled at them.

The thing about Harry's smile was: it was charming, and it had a way of transforming him, from weary to wonderfully delighted. On the eleven-year-old lonely orphan Hermione had met so long ago, it had been an Oliver Twist sort of smile, all the sadder for lighting up that thin face that carried the awful stamp of not being wanted. On the eighteen-year-old adult wizard, it was a thing to fall in love with at first sight, to trust absolutely.

Hermione had always been devoutly grateful that he had no idea what he could have done with that smile if he'd tried hard enough, and no interest in finding out. On this occasion, what he did was get her parents inside and pour strong tea into them so she and Ron could kiss hello, which they did – briefly but happily, Teddy sandwiched awkwardly between them.

"Like this all the way?" Ron asked, meaning Mum and Dad.

"More or less," Hermione admitted.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't know why they won't _understand_."

Ron shrugged. "Because it's not easy to be told you're not someone's priority."

She sighed, leaning her whole weight against him. He put an arm around her shoulders.

"But that's not _really_ it."

"But no amount of talking is going to make them see the difference."

"You managed. With your Mum."

"Tell you what," he said. "Tomorrow, we'll take 'em over to Hogwarts – show 'em the memorial, the building work. Maybe then they'll see."

Cut grass and paint; Teddy's baby-smell and the wood-smoke in Ron's jumper. Hermione found she'd tucked her head under his chin – all though school she'd wanted to do that. She and Harry were too close in height, but with Ron it worked perfectly.

"It won't work," she said. "Anti-Muggle enchantments. Have you _still_ not read _Hogwarts: A History_?"

Ron laughed at her.


End file.
